O’Flaherty writes Clinton on BC case

Massachusetts State Representative Eugene O’Flaherty has written Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton requesting her intervention in the Boston College archives case.

“I write to request your intervention in a matter that threatens the work done by so many to maintain a fragile peace in the North of Ireland through the Good Friday Agreement,” O’Flaherty wrote Clinton.

“I know personally how well the region is doing after having returned from a fact-finding visit recently with colleagues of mine in the Massachusetts Legislature. I write with concern that much of the progress I witnessed in ventures between the communities will be threatened with this court action in which the United Kingdom is subpoenaing oral history records from the ‘Belfast Project’ collected by researchers at Boston College University,” O’Flaherty added.

The rationale for this legal effort is not consistent with earlier representations made by those negotiating in good faith that that the treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom would not be used in connection with acts allegedly committed prior to the Good Friday Agreement.

“I question the legal justification presented by Her Majesty’s government given the enormous goodwill that created such an historic agreement.

Given the strategic significance of stability in Northern Ireland, it is in the best interest of the United States government to not cooperate with the strict reading of the Treaty and allow for a waiver given the serious possibility of the agreement being undermined.

I respectfully request that you involve yourself personally and urge our Attorney General to withhold American cooperation on these British requests and to state that we will oppose any effort to use the Treaty for political purposes when it will undermine the peace in Northern Ireland,” O’Flaherty concluded.

O’Flaherty’s letter follows similar communications to Clinton From Senator John Kerry and Congressman Joe Crowley.

SITE MAP

The value of the Oral Tradition is its democracy; it doesn't give to an intellectual elite the exclusive right to shape a communal memory and the collective memory. It makes into a common wealth the story of our shared lives. It's something that we share in common – and it's like a collection plate into which we can all put something: our stories, our myths and the ease with which we are able to, in some way, cross boundaries. - Cleophus Thomas, Jr.

First Circuit Court of Appeals

May, 2013

“… we must forcefully conclude that preserving the judicial power to supervise the enforcement of subpoenas in the context of the present case, guarantees the preservation of a balance of powers… In substance, we rule that the enforcement of subpoenas is an inherent judicial function which, by virtue of the doctrine of separation of powers, cannot be constitutionally divested from the courts of the United States. Nothing in the text of the US-UK MLAT, or its legislative history, has been cited by the government to lead us to conclude that the courts of the United States have been divested of an inherent judicial role that is basic to our function as judges.”

“… the district court acted within its discretion in ordering their production, it abused its discretion in ordering the production of a significant number of interviews that only contain information that is in fact irrelevant to the subject matter of the subpoena.”

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